Nokia Gets Music

After eight months of negotiation, Warner Music has finally agreed to offer its music catalog to Nokia’s online store, allowing the new “Comes with Music” cellular plan to go into effect. With Sony-BMG and Universal already signed up for the plan, Nokia was left with two challenges-EMI and Warner.

After eight months of negotiation, Warner Music has finally agreed to offer its music catalog to Nokia’s online store, allowing the new “Comes with Music” cellular plan to go into effect. With Sony-BMG and Universal already signed up for the plan, Nokia was left with two challenges-EMI and Warner. Now, with Warner on board, the world’s largest cellular phone producer makes sure its online store is bigger and better, and only lacks EMI interest and involvement.

Nokia’s “Comes with Music” plan enables consumers to download an unlimited amount of songs from three of the four major record labels for one year, free! The idea is that, at the end of Nokia subscribers’ one year period, they’ll pay a fee to maintain the access they’ve had to new music or simply buy more songs from Nokia’s online store. In other words, they won’t want to leave that convenient access to which they’ve become accustomed.

With iTunes and other relevant music downloading services as obvious competitors, Nokia isn’t worried since they’ve come up with a clever proposal-: buy a cell-phone plan, and get free music for a year!

Before signing the deal, Warner was wary of potential copyright infringement and eportedly apprehensive about Nokia’s “Mosh” website which was said to allow unauthorized file-sharing of copyrighted music.

Michael Nash, Warner’s chief of digital strategy had this to say, “This is probably the most important deal of its kind that we’ve done so far. The Nokia deal could pave the way for similar deals with other carriers.”

“Comes with Music” will provide consumers with millions of tracks, making available various songs by artists such as Madonna, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and REM.